


gladly beyond

by atramento



Category: Final Fantasy Tactics
Genre: Gen, Headcanon, Missing Scene, POV Minor Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:55:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27346201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atramento/pseuds/atramento
Summary: The queen makes a choice.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	gladly beyond

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CorpseBrigadier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier/gifts).



Ruvelia’s eyes lingered on Orinas as the courier scooped him up. A swoop of golden hair-- almost a hint of red to the rich curls... he really did look like his father. She wanted to commit the boy to the darkness under her eyelids before he became little more than a memory. It was wrenching, really, to think that all her efforts and words amounted to nothing. 

That she and Orinas might amount to nothing as well now.

A peasant would take the throne with his puppet queen. The itchiness of it would make Ruvelia utterly scoff if she had more than empty, numb contempt left under her skin. 

And now Orinas was meant to be going away to Romanda with Ruvelia using the last vestiges of her influence to try and spare the young boy a harsher fate at the hands of the new king. Perhaps he’d achieve a great many aspirations there that would make her and his father proud. She bared her teeth in something closer to a grimace than an actual smile as she stared facing the last time she’d ever see those dimpled cheeks and wide hazel eyes. 

Orinas  _ had  _ to make his own way and carry on a now incomplete legacy without either of his parents. Ruvelia forced all other outcomes from her mind. Young Orinas would live and flourish in Romanda,  _ he had to. _

Even as a prisoner Ruvelia had a few ears on the outside. She now kept her own actual ears pressed against the walls of Besselat as though the cool unfeeling stone would whisper secrets or comforts. Instead, they brought yet more misery to lay at her feet. Of particular note to her was that House Beoulve was suddenly no more. A great beast of a noble House collapsing under its own weight, she was told. 

Hardly any of it made sense but she had little else to ponder--  _ Orinas was too painful to think about right now _ \-- other than the distant roaring of war and men shuffling around Fort Besselat in their armor. 

She tried to picture what would tear the Beoulves apart. 

Mayhaps Zalbaag grew tired of Dycedarg’s machinations and turned the blade on his lord brother. But Ruvelia knew that to be unlikely; Zalbaag ever the obedient war hound. Always seeking redemption and holiest praises as he attempted to cut a bloody swath away from his own inner sin. 

No. That was not it, Ruvelia told herself. Something new nipped at the edges of her consciousness, telling her to seek the truth.  _ Dycedarg would not have quietly accepted the descent of his House.  _ It was more likely that Dycedarg-- well, no. Dycedarg Beoulve had many qualities. He was however most certainly not tyrannical or, rather,  _ stupid.  _ If Zalbaag still served a purpose the eldest Beoulve brother could and would eke it out of him. 

She held only a little doubt then that someone sabotaged both Dycedarg and Zalbaag. An outside hand paid-- 

“Her Highness the Queen Atkascha. Or perhaps I should say now... Ruvelia.” The voice startled her so suddenly out of her thoughts that she gave a small gasp, the most responsive reaction she’d given since her imprisonment. Her eyes narrowed. 

The peasant stood before her confinement looking as numb as she felt. Bedecked though he was in finery, she noticed right away the cut on his lower lip and the gritty skin around it that revealed a history of days without food. 

“Surprised to see me so soon?” His arms arc out wide and assertive. “I did not wish to keep you-- or Ovelia-- waiting.” 

Ruvelia pushed off of the wall and approached the bars, resting fingers against metal. “I did not think I would see you at all.” 

His eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. Ruvelia trained herself to know the very subtle inflections of a person’s face and she could easily spot that he was appraising her and her condition, judging if she was a threat. 

She wondered, in the brief and idle silence between them, if he treated little Ovelia the same. 

“An intriguing thought occurred to me.” He broke the silence once more, footsteps making hardly an echo on the floor. He was stepping carefully as he began pacing in front of Ruvelia’s prison.

“The crown demands loyalty from its servants. When came the last hour that the same was demanded of the crown?” 

Ruvelia followed his pacing, watching for signs that this country-bred man might lunge towards her. She did not anticipate such a thing happening though the miserable silence between the two of them left her unable to do much else. 

She noticed most of all the rapacious quality to his frame, in everything he did. 

And desperate men would pay atrocious prices to gain what they wanted. Be it food, a night of shelter, or the removal of two important and powerful figures. 

“What would loyalty mean to  _ you? _ ” His dark gaze rested solely upon her. She watched his fingers fall away from the fringes of the cloak gracing his shoulders before finally returning his surveilling stare. 

“Is it a commodity?” Somehow his words became indisputably worse in that he was not smiling as he laid this thought out before her. He was no greedy bastard rapping his fingers on a mahogany desk but a coeurl slinking about; hungry and determining every move as if each were his last. “An ideal you’ve pondered, measured, and demanded but never returned?” 

“Get to the point.” Ruvelia’s voice had become more rasping than she remembered. Though it was well enough-- her mouth had not needed to open in several days’ time. Stone walls required no rousing speeches, no intimate and mortal promises. Metal bars did not weep at one’s chiding. 

He bid air into his lungs with a heaving sigh; as though this was hardly the sort of pleasant business he would wish to spend his meticulously scheduled time on. Perhaps he was upset with Ruvelia for not having the same patience for theatrics? Not her fault at all. She had never had the flair for such histrionics that her departed brother had possessed nor even the same quietly melodramatic energy as Dycedarg.

_ Dycedarg... _

“Huh?” The former queen nearly missed what was next said and she still could not believe what she thought she heard. 

Another sigh. “Prove to me you’ve any fidelity left,” He slid a dagger out and tossed it to Ruvelia. “Perish upon this blade and your son will live his life unfettered.” 

“...You were going to murder Orinas.” Ruvelia at last gave indication of emotion by way of furrowing her brows in stern disapproval. 

“When a hair is loose from the head, it is either put back into place or clipped. The same for loose  _ heirs  _ of the crown. I would not leave you or your son to fray the edges of Ovelia’s new kingdom.” His arms crossed as though this were a simple matter. For him, perhaps it was. 

“Ovelia’s kingdom? Or  _ your _ kingdom?” Ruvelia sneered, letting the blade’s cold edge linger above the bare skin of her other arm. 

He rolled his neck and she heard a dull crack that he winced lightly from. “The only scenario in which I can ensure young Orinas’s continued health is the one where you aren’t a factor of his development. I’ll see him safely to Romanda, entrust him to a new family perhaps; but you... you first must do what needs be done.” 

“Hmm...” Ruvelia hadn’t figured the provincial would force upon her this cruel choice to begin with, but she could make do of it. She let the tip of the blade press into her arm at the elbow and began trailing a long cut up her arm. 

The faint idea that she might escape from this trough with deception faded the moment she saw his brows twitch upward mere seconds before she felt the seizing in the arm she cut. “Wha..?” Ruvelia murmured in disbelief. 

He strutted over quickly and guided the blade from her arm to her midsection. 

“It is not mossfungus.” The commoner remarked. “But you and I both might find it symbolic that you would be felled by poison. Considering the company you kept--” 

Ruvelia could only start to convulse as he spoke, staring at him with twitching and hateful eyes as her hand released the dagger now rooted and burning in her stomach. 

“--and what had befallen your enemies and allies alike... I would say it’s quite fitting.” Ruvelia’s eyes, already clouding, lingered heavy on the sight of the man who would be king. 

**Author's Note:**

> "...somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond.... or if your wish be to close me, I and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly..."


End file.
